Trump the dealmaker wants a slice of the AI boom
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President Trump is pursuing a Bernie-like interest in having the U.S. government take stakes in AI giants — not out of populism, but with a dealmaker's eye for profit.
Why it matters: Having the government take equity in private companies — anathema to free-market capitalism and Republican dogma about "picking winners and losers" — has become a defining feature of Trump's second term.
- The U.S. government now owns shares of chipmakers, miners and quantum computing companies, often taking a stake in exchange for federal money that was originally meant to come with no ownership strings attached.
- Trump said Friday that he "should be a stockbroker," pointing to his administration's recent deal to take a stake in Intel.
By the numbers: Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic may soon be worth trillions of dollars, which means even small stakes could be meaningful to the federal government.
- For example, a 2% stake in a $3 trillion company works out to $60 billion.
- That means the U.S. government would have a financial incentive to help these companies grow bigger, which dovetails with Trump's existing laissez-faire AI policy.
Zoom in: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Trump share an instinct that the government should capture a piece of AI's windfall, but they would slice the pie very differently.
- Sanders is proposing legislation requiring that top AI companies pay a one-time 50% tax in stock. That would flow into a sovereign wealth fund that distributes gains to the public.
- Trump is discussing voluntary equity stakes that would give the government a direct cut of AI companies, telling reporters Friday he wants Americans to be partners "in this revolution."
- "As far as economics is concerned, we have certain things that aren't that far apart," Trump said of Sanders.
Behind the scenes: Populists may feel the White House tide is turning on AI, given the recent departure of AI czar David Sacks and the pending departure of deputy Sriram Krishnan.
- Neither of them left over policy disagreements. Sacks' time as a special government employee was up, and he's still a White House adviser. Krishnan plans to launch a large AI consulting group and is expected to remain in Trump's orbit.
- Sacks has publicly cautioned against the government taking stakes in Big AI, but mostly because of his libertarian leanings and what it could mean with Democrats in power. Not because he believes Trump has gone soft on accelerationism.
What we're watching: Trump said he has a meeting coming up in the "very near future" — as soon as this week — with tech companies to discuss what a partnership with the government could look like.
